


Swim Until You Can't See Land

by hannasus



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x06, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, F/M, Light Angst, Marriage Proposal, Missing Scene, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 05:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5235485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannasus/pseuds/hannasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last few times he woke like this, back at the beginning of the summer, she held him in her arms as he described the recurring terrors that haunted his nights, and she told him that everything would be okay. And it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swim Until You Can't See Land

Oliver comes awake gasping for breath, a familiar weight sitting like a stone on his chest.

Felicity is still sleeping peacefully beside him, so he staggers out of bed as quietly as he can manage with his heart hammering out the _1812 Overture._ He only makes it as far as the top of the stairs before collapsing against the wall and sinking to the floor.

He hasn’t had an attack like this in months. Foolishly, he thought he was past them. That he was cured. That love had chased the demons away, once and for all.

Pretty naive of him, in retrospect.

“Oliver?” Felicity whispers from the doorway of the bedroom.

“Here.” His voice comes out thick and choked.

She steps up behind him, and her fingers ghost through his hair. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine. I had a bad dream, that’s all.” A pointless lie when she can smell the sweat and fear pouring off his skin. When she knows his bad dreams are more than just bad dreams.

She sits down beside him on the top step and curls her hands around his arm. “Tell me about it?”

He answers with another lie: “I can’t remember it.”

“Okay,” she says, drawing back a little.

The last few times he woke like this, back at the beginning of the summer, she held him in her arms as he described the recurring terrors that haunted his nights, and she told him that everything would be okay. And it was.

He looks down at her hand on his arm. Swallows thickly. “I dreamed I lost you.”

She tugs him closer and presses a kiss into his temple. “I’m right here.”

He nods, blinking back tears.

“Oliver?”

He closes his eyes as her fingertips brush over his cheek, then his lips, then his forehead, smoothing his hair back from his face.

“Oliver, please talk to me.”

He opens his eyes but keeps his gaze locked on the far wall, too much of a coward to look at her as he makes his confession. “Ever since we came back to Star City, I think I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for you to tell me it was all a mistake, that we can’t be together and save the city after all. So when you said you regretted uprooting your whole life for me—”

Her fingers tighten on his arm. “That’s not what I—”

“You were right,” he says. “We were living in a dream. And it was great for a while—the happiest few months of my life—but I always knew eventually we were going to have to come back down to earth. And I guess I was afraid that when we did, you’d realize we didn’t belong together.”

“Oliver that’s crazy. You know that, right?”

He finally lets himself look at her; she’s so beautiful it makes his chest hurt. Beautiful and kind and smart and funny … it’s incomprehensible how he ever managed to win her affection in the first place. “I know you said we were gonna be fine, but just look at my track record—I’m no good at relationships, Felicity.”

“And I am? Need I remind you of the boyfriend who faked his own suicide and became a supervillain?”

Despite himself, Oliver huffs out a laugh. But the levity fades as quickly as it appeared. “There was this moment earlier tonight …” He pauses and shakes his head. “For a second I thought …” He can still feel the cold spike of fear.

“What?”

“I thought you were leaving me.”

“What? No!” She cups his face in her hands, holding his gaze with her own. “I would never. Do you understand me? _Never._ Not even if you asked me to, probably. And I don’t even care if that makes me some kind of crazy-obsessed stalker-type girlfriend. You’re stuck with me, buster, whether you like it or not.”

He can hear the weight of truth behind her words. Even more than that, he can _feel_ it. It makes his uncertainty seems baseless and silly.

Thank god. Because he knows this much is true: he will never love another woman as long as he lives.

Her hand is cool on his cheek, and he reaches up to cover it with his own. “All I want is to make you happy.”

“Hey,” she soothes. “You do. You make my life better every single day, just by being in it. Even when I don’t necessarily show it.”

She kisses him once, gently. And then again more fervently, one hand wrapped around the back of his head, the other splayed over his cheek. It makes him feel breathless again, but in the good way.

“I’m sorry,” she says, resting her forehead against his. “I’m so sorry I made you feel that way.”

He shakes his head; he doesn’t want her to feel bad, ever. “You were feeling a lot of pressure. I understand that.”

“That doesn’t make it right.” She tips her head and rests it on his shoulder; it fits there perfectly, like his shoulder was designed only for this purpose. “It’s probably going to happen again, you know. We’re bound to take things out on each other sometimes. I just—” She reaches for his hand, interlacing their fingers. “I need you to know that no matter what, I still love you and I will _always_ want to be with you.”

He squeezes her hand. “Felicity—”

Whatever he was about to say goes right out of his head, because he suddenly realizes what he _wants_ to say. What he’s been aching to say all along.

She lifts her head, her brow crinkling. “Oliver?”

He’s been a coward. Making excuses to himself for putting it off. Pretending he was waiting for the perfect moment to come around again, when all he ever needed were two simple words:

“Marry me.”

Felicity’s eyes widen, her cheeks flooding with color. “Yes,” she says, nodding. “Yes! Of course, yes!”

When they kiss it’s exuberant and clumsy, both of them laughing and crying at the same time. It’s also electric, charged with all the promise of the future that will be theirs.

But there’s something else that needs to be done. Oliver grabs her hand and pulls her off the floor, towing her back to the bedroom.

“Wait right here,” he says, depositing her in the middle of the room and squeezing her arms once before disappearing into the closet.

He reemerges a moment later, ring in hand, and drops down on one knee before her. “Felicity Smoak,” he says, his voice only breaking a little, “will you be my wife?”

“Yes,” she whispers, the tears spilling freely down her cheeks now. She holds out a trembling hand, and he slips the ring on her finger.

The smile that lights up her face is bright enough to power all of Star City, and Oliver vows in that moment to make sure she keeps smiling like that for the rest of their lives.

Felicity pulls him to his feet and throws her arms around his neck. “Mine,” she says. “Always and forever.”

He wraps her up tight, lifting her off the floor. “Always and forever.”


End file.
